The trees were thinning out and houses were just able to be seen when Gabriel stopped walking.
"The people here in town.. Aren't they scared and panicked with this dome here?" He sounded hesitant.
"Of course they are." Norrie answered, face stormy as she thought back to the last few days. "It's chaos, one problem after another, and the worst assholes are raiding houses and killing people."
Gabriel's face darkened at that, but when he spoke again his voice hadn't changed. "Then if they see me, a stranger, what will they do? I'm assuming everyone knows everyonelpin a small town like this."
"Not everyone, there were a few travellers coming through town the day the dome came down." Joe said. "Norrie was one of them."
"But yeah, many people will be suspicious, especially since you were at the center of the dome," Norrie admitted.
"What else were we supposed to do?" Joe argued. "We couldn't just have left him lying there!"
There was an eerie silence of contemplation, only broken by the leaves rustling in the trees. The trio stood still at the edge of the forest.
"I'll just hide somewhere." Gabriel offered. "Just until I've-"
He cut himself off before he could finish his sentence and looked irritated at himself.
"Just until you what?" Norrie rounded on him, narrowing her eyes, voice sharp. "What were you doing in the forest, huh? What aren't you telling us, 'Gabriel'?"
Joe looked on, interested in what the newcomer had to say for himself. His eyes drifted to the stain in the other's shirt. Old blood, he'd said. Old blood from what?
Gabriel looked at her, considering, before speaking. "I don't remember." He admitted, to the surprise of both of them.
"...What?" Norrie voiced her confusion, the edge slipping out of her voice.
"Last thing I remember, I was in Indiana," his voice turned bitterly resigned, with a tang of pain in it at the memory, "dying from a stab wound, in the burned wreck of some hotel."
The teenagers were silent at that, speechless. Indiana, that was like nine hundred miles away. But a more pressing issue took up their minds. Joe's eyes snapped back to the bloody shirt. A stab wound.
Finally Joe managed to find his voice. Instead of the thousands of questions racing through his mindmind, most importantly how had the guy survived that, he only managed an alarmed, "You were what?"
Gabriel shrugged. "That doesn't matter now. If you kids are seen with a stranger-"
"Like hell it doesn't!" Norrie snapped. "You died, then came back to life under the dome. That has to mean something, doesn't it?"
"Maybe." Gabriel admitted. "But right now we have to make sure you two aren't seen with me, or people will associate us. They'll ask questions, or worse, they won't ask at all."
Norrie nodded, reluctantly, and Joe felt safe to join the conversation again. "I might know a place."
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Gabriel felt worried for the kids that had found him not an hour before.
The two had been reluctant to let him go alone around town, probably because he was their only lead on the dome, but he'd assured them he wouldn't be seen. It was the best option, they'd reconvene at the McAlister house, the boy's house.
The dome. The dome that Gabriel had felt the moment he had woken up but which he hadn't really noticed until he'd checked his Grace.
His Grace, the little that was left of it, was surrounding the town. Ten square kilometers of land, and his Grace had acted on its own to surround it in an impassible dome of pure energy.
It had been to protect him, Gabriel was sure of it. He'd seen it happen to his younger brothers and sisters, when they'd nearly died and their grace surrounded them in a protective bubble until they had recovered enough.
But this, this was on a whole new scale. Maybe because it was an archangel this time, as even a scrap of their Grace was more powerful than any lower angel's full power, or maybe it was something else. Either way, Gabriel's death prevention bubble had caused plenty of human lives to go to waste already, if he'd understood Kid Boyfriend and Kid Girlfriend correctly, and if he couldn't stop it, it would take more.
Right now, though, he was weak. Barely more than a human. The hole in his vessel had been easily healed, the hole in his Grace not so much.
Lucifer... had meant to kill him. His big brother, the very one who had taught Gabriel to fight back, to stand up and act, had struck him down and left him for dead.
The thought pained him, but he ignored the deep hurt and pushed away the sting of loneliness. Right now, the pressing issue was finding out why the hell he wasn't angel-shish-kebab and how he was going to get enough control back over his Grace to safely poof away the dome.
He carefully mentally recounted the teenagers' instructions. He was just past a relatively small roadway named Little Bitch Road, which Gabriel fully approved of, by the way. Now he was to follow the big road until the edge of the dome, where there'd be a road splitting off from this one and on the corner a single house. There shouldn't be anyone on the road, but stay off to the side just to be sure.
At full power Gabriel wouldn't have cared less about that instruction, but since right now he was nowhere near full power and also stuck under a dome of his own making he wasn't so confident. He still couldn't be killed, not unless these mortals had an Archangel Blade or a Colt, but he also didn't fancy being locked up or tortured.
It didn't take long for the big house to come into sight, and Gabriel was a bit surprised to see the remnants of a plane long forgotten next to the road's end.
It must have crashed against the dome that shimmered like a wall just after the plane's remains. Gabriel could feel it; he could feel his Grace swirling along the barrier, enforcing it, strengthening it.
How many deaths had he caused already? How many more would he cause?
And that wasn't the worst of it, either. The Dome would be on the news all over America, maybe even world-wide. The moment any of his older brothers saw it, they would know. They'd be waiting for him outside.
Gabriel turned his gaze back to the house and resumed his pace towards it. No use worrying about that now.
He didn't give the heavy lock on the heavily locked door a second glance as he stepped inside- he wasn't that weakened- and caught Joe sitting on the couch despondently, staring at the TV like something was actually on. For a moment Gabriel worried for the guy's sanity. (Ironic, coming from him.)
"Joe?" He called out, picking up the mood in the room. "What happened? Where's your girlfriend?"
Joe stiffened in alarm at the sound of a voice, but after the moment it took him to recognize it, his shoulders fell again and he turned around slowly.
"Norrie's mom just died of a heart attack." He responded dully, turning back to the black screen. "She said she wanted some time alone."
Gabriel felt the urge to joke, 'Norrie's mom said that?' but felt that maybe that wouldn't go over well.
"I'm sorry," he said instead. That's what humans said to each other when another human died, right? And, intentional or not, it was Gabriel's fault.
Joe looked at him as if he was only just noticing he was here. "Gabriel! Come on, I set up a place in the barn for you to stay. My sister might see you if you stay in here."
Gabriel nodded and followed the teenager.